Everyone Is Mad

Closing speech of the Great International Online Conversation of the WAP, “The Woman Does Not Exist”, on April 3, 2022.

I dedicate this conference to Angelina Harari who, as president for four years, has led the life of the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP) with a hand that has sometimes been rough, sometimes gentle, but always to the point.

It falls to me to give the title of the Congresses of the WAP*. Why is this so? The habit has taken hold, it has become a kind of tradition – danger! This will not always be so. But for now I guess that that time has not yet come. So, I will continue to do so. Our next conference will be entitled: “Everyone is Mad”.

Context

Like the title of this conference – “The Woman Does Not Exist” –, “Everyone is Mad” is an aphorism of Lacan’s. I fished it out in a small piece of writing that Lacan had written at my request. At the time, it was a matter of defending the Department of Psychoanalysis at Vincennes, whose existence within the University of Paris VIII was under threat. It is still threatened every year – for reasons of circumstance, but also for a structural reason. The truth is that, as Lacan wrote, “[psychoanalysis] cannot be taught”. This is due to the opposition, which as I say is structural, between the analytical discourse and the university discourse, between the knowledge always supposed in the practice of psychoanalysis and the exposed knowledge that holds sway in the university discourse. I will not develop this opposition, which is well known to us.

I extracted this aphorism from a few lines written by Lacan from a time that could be said to be beyond the grave, insofar as it is situated after the Seminar that he entitled “The moment to conclude”. Everything Lacan wrote or said after this Seminar enjoys a special status as an afterthought to the completed set of his teaching – I use this word, which he also used before he pushed it away. This gives these fragmentary remarks a testamentary value. Everyone is mad, Lacan formulated it once and only once, in a text published in the then confidential journal, Ornicar? Because I pointed it out, commented on it, repeated it, this aphorism entered our common language, that of the WAP, and into what we could call our doxa. It has even become a kind of slogan.